Music review: Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrici, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh
Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh *****
It’s a bold performer who opens her set with an imprecation to the grim reaper, but Rhiannon Giddens stilled the hall on this Edinburgh Tradfest opening night with an incantatory rendition of Oh Death, hollered passionately over the stark rattle and whump of Francesco Turrisi’s hand drum.
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Hide AdThe traditional song was, among other things, an acknowledgement of death the leveller, as the recent Covid-19 pandemic reminded us all too sharply, but also touched on the Carolina-raised singer’s concerns at the injustices of African-American history, while at the same time leading on to this consummate song gatherer’s interest in other musical cultures.
Thus there was the sass and swagger of Bye Bye Baby Blues – “the most non-dysfunctional blues I know”, or an homage to the kind of tongue-in-cheek raunch favoured by the likes of Bessie Smith, but also the floating cadences of a traditional Italian love song or the Gaelic lament Griogal cridhe (a poignant but pointed reminder of slaves absorbing Gaelic from their owners in North Carolina).
With Giddens toting vintage-style banjos as well as her much-loved viola, and multi-instrumentalist Turrisi ranging across drums, banjos, accordion and piano, there were fine instrumental interludes, but what perhaps hit home most were songs like We Shall Not Be Moved, invested with renewed dignity, or her own Build A House, with its defiantly purposeful litany of injustice.
A short but impressive opening set came from violinist Roo Geddes and accordionist Neil Sutcliffe.
Billed simply as Roo & Neil, there was, however, nothing casual about their string and reed partnership, which embraces folk, jazz and classical elements, and which here unfurled beguilingly from bird calls and tidal susurrus into mellifluous Castilian melodies before swinging through pizzicato-based ragtime to a gentle finale.